on my mind [what's left of it]

i didn't mean to not post last week. but it was just one of those weeks - things just didn't seem to click into place and even though i knew it wasn't going to fit i kept trying to put that round peg in the square hole.

sometimes i think that it's when you get relief from something that you really realize how challenging something has been. for example the little has been sleeping through the night for months now and yet i still can't seem to catch up on sleep. it's almost as if my body now that it is getting some decent sleep is letting me know how bad the deficit actually was. and is.

people sometimes ask me what it's like to be an artist and a mom. this was something that i thought about - A LOT - before deciding to have a child. i knew that being a mom would become the most important thing and that i would have to learn how to juggle and struggle in new ways. in all honesty - it wasn't even possible for me to fathom how this would all work - even on my best days of guessing. there is no way to know what temperament your child will have [on a day to day basis let alone overall] - there is no way to know how you will respond to demands of parenthood. i was determined from the get go that i would still make art. and i'm managing to do that, but it feels like it's by the seat of my pants and the skin of my teeth.

this parenting thing is such a wonderful, heart wrenching, impossible, amazing, laughter inducing, tear generating [both the joyous and upset kind] most rewarding and difficult thing i've ever even attempted. and i think about the millions - the billions - of people out there who are parents. about the generations of people who have done this. how in some strange way we are genetically wired to do this. and it just boggles my brain. [what's left of it anyway. it's a known fact that you loose gray matter during pregnancy. you are supposed to get it back, but i think my brain cells are still missing].

my friend eireann sent along this incredible essay by Sara Vap on her son Oskar [and his cars]. it sort of says much of how i feel in a much more eloquent way. it's part essay, part poem, dense and authentic in a way that riveted me. this paragraph in particular really got to me:

What I could try to tell you is that in mothering, I’ve lost the mind that I had before. I’ve lost my solitude, my body, my privacy, my time, my concentration. Mothering, I have lost my seriousness, my access, my connection to, my inclusion. Mothering, I have lost my sleep, my dreams, my mornings, my nights, my money, my job, and my time with other adults and other poets. As a pregnant woman, as a nursing woman, as a mothering woman, I have lost nearly all of the ways and props and yearnings and communities that defined who I previously understood myself to be. What I mean is, I no longer remember or recognize myself, mothering as I am.

and so i think i am re-defining who i am. which is a weird thing to confront at this moment in my life. before the little i have to say i was pretty comfortable with my life, with my decisions, with my "place" in the world. and now that's all shifting and changing in ways i can't really describe. this isn't a good or a bad thing. it's just how it is. sometimes it's lonely. sometimes it's thrilling. sometimes it's tragically funny. and it certainly alters how i look at an interact with the world. it's interesting for me to think about how this is what i expect from the art that i engage with. i want it to change me, my view, my body, my heart somehow and in someway. and so life is art and visa versa [i know i know not a new statement it's just funny how it's so true]

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||



let's leave on a crafty note, shall we? a friend's wife is due any minute. they have decided not to know the sex of their wee one. so i made a sweater for the babe, and a matching sweater for the big sis [because i think the big kids sometimes get left out of the gift giving when a little one arrives]. hopefully they will fit. [if the big one is too little i guess it's a double baby present!].

the pattern came from lion brand [free as long as you give them your email address - but they don't send out solicitations unless you ask for them].

my first crocheted sweater. i made one for my little too. 3 green sweaters. i'm trying another one for the little in yellow. different pattern. we'll see how it goes.

have a lovely week.